Egyptian nationalists reframed the Sudanese Mahdi as a controllable political symbol

Evidence

But voices of such magnitude are often changed in translation. Muhammad Ahmad (the Mahdï) was an important example of how to use Islam as a potent political weapon against the encroaching British empire. To al- Afghänï he was not a real Mahdï, or messiah, nor could his call for government to promote his Islamic principles elsewhere (notably by means of a Sudanese conquest of Egypt) be accepted by al-Afghänï, who had so closely allied himself with the most important figures of Egyptian nationalism.Yet a powerful ambivalence about the Mahdï runs throughout the many articles published by al-Afghänï in his journal Al-Urwa al-Wuthqa´ (The Indissoluble Link). Writing from exile in Paris with his brilliant student, the Egyptian scholar and thinker Muhammad Abduh, and in constant contact with Sanü`a, al-Afghänï fashioned Muhammad Ahmad into a more controllable political force, until General Gordon’s death in the overthrow of Khartoum was discovered and the Mahdï’s image in Europe could no longer be whitewashed. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 455

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did al-Afghani’s reshaping of the Mahdi relate to Egyptian anxieties about Sudanese ambitions (like the Sudanese conquest of Egypt idea) that he suppressed?
• XREF: Connects to postcolonial scholarship on how metropolitan nationalist movements instrumentalize peripheral figures, e.g. how Egyptian elites framed Sudanese events for their own agenda.
• SEED: Potential essay: how one empire’s dissidents erase another people’s agency by editing their leaders into controllable symbols.